“We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling.” – Carl Jung.

Now, abstract expressionism is something else. Here you feel every emotion, use every color, choose to follow whichever you want, expressed but exaggerated, synthesized, abstracted, with no association pictured and free to be associated with any event you choose, or none at all. It doesn’t matter. Just feel, like music. Like perfume. Like the atmosphere of twilight. Like a smile. Like a tear. Like the madness of confusion. Like rebellion. Like the laughter of a clown playing an insane joke.

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” – Carl Jung.

The turn into the twentieth century was frought with new inventions and possibilities. The new world was rushing into the future. Electricity had come of age. The railroads had conquered the land. The telephone had been invented. The camera had been invented. And, here’s the rub, the camera portrayed reality better than the painters. So, what’s an artist to do?

Radio was coming, connecting everyone everywhere. War was coming. The Spanish Flu was coming. Everything was changing. Possibilities. Confusion, conflict, chaos. Can’t keep up? Escape instead. Look the other way. Jump back, into your inner being. Live in your own dream world. A retreat back into innocence, childhood. Back to basics. Simplicity regained in a world going mad. Let us disassociate from reality and connect instead with our internal subconsciousness. Let us swim in our collective unconscious, submerged in our limbic being, our primitive fish form, our basic instincts, fight or flee, survive, live right now. This is the dream, the surreal, the myth, the archetype. Welcome, 100 years later.

It is the wind which changes everything
The unsettling wind
Which is filling the swelling, invisible tension of movement
Replacing it with space
Announcing itself in whistles
Speaking in unknown tongues
Using only vowels and moans
With overtones of jazz and chaos
Actions dictated by anarchy
And, directed by insanity
Without regard to the rest of the world
It is the wind which changes everything

I very much enjoyed this series. It was close to home and thus close to my heart. But, what interested me the most was the variety of colors with which it worked. Expressionism is all about color. We are blue when we are sad, green with envy, black rage, passion’s red, pretty in pink. This is the original sketch and, through the magic of digital software I was able to transform it into a summer day.

“Ichetucknee Trees, Green” – Digital Art – 2017

As though this was not enough, further transformation brought this image.

“Ichetucknee Trees, Blue” – Digital Art – 2017

Twilight in the forest. A whole different feeling, without adding a shadow.

I have not been able to decide which I like better. My preference seems to change with the seasons and the time of day, with my mood, who I am with. What about you?

Let us dance
Let us dance
Let us dance without colors
In a clap of tropical thunder
Boiling over with curiosity
Then, the sudden slap of the splendor of electric skies
And, hidden spirits are revealed for only a celebratory moment
Too quick to be seen or remembered
Too sharp to be forgotten
Too important to be left under your pillow